Attack Of The Shame Monster

How Shame takes away your power and keeps you from creating.

I had originally planned to publish today’s Weekly Agenda about creating your personal brand mood board. Launching off of what I wrote last week about being a spring baby and into a guided practice on how you can work with yourself to hone in on your aesthetic, but something else has gotten ahold of me, and the cute stuff had to be shelved for now.

I have been sparring with the shame monster. It’s taken a lot of work for me to even get to this understanding and naming of the opponent. I think previously I would have blamed the lows on depression, lack of support, someone else hurting my feelings, low self-esteem, poor decisions in my past, or fear that I am letting others down. Now, don’t get me wrong, situational embarrassment, as well as guilt and anxiety, is a sign that you have made a mistake, or know you are not doing what you are supposed to in order to stay aligned with your goals. The difference in those other feelings are typically that the act, not the person, is the focus, and after apologizing or an available remedy, the feeling is gone.

When it is internalized is when it becomes debilitating and pathological.

I have no training or expertise in the subject, so I can only write from my own perspective living with Shame, how it clouds my creativity and things I’ve learned in the healing process.

Where Does Shame Come From?

“The key emotion in all forms of shame is contempt. Two realms in which shame is expressed are the consciousness of self as bad and self as inadequate. People employ negative coping responses to counter deep rooted, associated sense of "shameworthiness". From the Handbook of Experimental Existential Psychology.

The muddy roots of your Shame can be traced back to events in your childhood. If as a child, you ever felt unwanted, resented and/or misunderstood this feeling would be confusing and without a safe space to discuss it- stored internally. This bad feeling, can lead to low self-esteem which can lead to poor decision making skills, which then cycle back into feeding and fertilizing the original shame. Then as you age, you might even have grown ups tell you the reason you feel that way, is because you are bad, or are a sinner.

Beginning in childhood, I have been hyper-focused on how everyone behaved around me. I used their emotions and expressions to create the current emotional place I was in. As much as I am aware of it now, I can always tell how my husband’s day went by the way his shoes walk into our home. These old habits die hard. I knew as a child, if a grown up was having a bad day, it would alter how our evening would go. I have to tell myself now, as an adult, it’s okay if someone is having a bad day. It is not about you. There is still a struggle within me when offering support to someone close to me. Am I doing this so they are happy with me and then provide a signal to my own worthiness? Or am I doing this so I can make someone I love feel better? The latter is how good relationships stay good relationships.

Why do I care so much about what everyone thinks and feels about me and sometimes just feels around me?

Well, it’s because on the inside, I feel horrible about myself. I am using the present tense of these words, because today I feel that way. Other days this week I might not, but it is an ongoing struggle for me to feel unworthy of happiness and scared to be alone. If someone I love is having a bad day around me, and I cannot make it better, maybe they won’t want to be around me anymore? The confusing part about living with shame is that it can be masked with big smiles, goofy behavior and even appearing confident to others. The amount of times in my life I have been told by someone else how confident I am is in the triple digits. Now, the amount of times I have actually felt confident is few and far between.

How Does Shame Affect Your Work?

In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron writes about shame as an artist in Week 3: Recovering A Sense Of Power.

‘Often we are wrongly shamed as creatives. From this shaming, we learn that we are wrong to create. Once we learn this lesson, we forget it instantly. Buried under it doesn’t matter, the shame lives on, waiting to attach itself to out new efforts. The very act of attempting to make art creates shame.’

Making art is like telling a secret, and having shame is holding onto those secrets.

‘Art opens the closets, air out the cellars and attics. It brings healing. But before a wound can heal it must be seen, and this act of exposing the wound to air and light, the artist’s act, is often reacted to with shaming.’

‘Art brings things to light. It illuminates us. It sheds light on our lingering darkness. It casts a beam into the heart of our own darkness and says, “See?”’

When I started posting my poems online last year, I told a friend, I just feel so alone in how I feel, I craved someone to read what I write and say “I feel the same way”. I knew that sharing my secrets would feel good for me, but I was only in the first steps of healing.

Julia’s words are so true to me, but I can’t help but think of another shame cycle. The inherent need to share feelings and make art most likely stems from shame and other unprocessed emotions, so it’s interesting to me that it also fuels the shame. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy every which way you turn.

Ideally, anytime someone with Shame shared their art, or writing, it would go viral and additionally hit critical acclaim. We would all share our secrets, and then no secrets would be left festering in the shadows! Since that is not the case, the true bravery of sharing your creative gifts when knowing the vulnerability can cause shame, is doing it for the sake of releasing it, and not expecting applause.

I love attention. I can be honest about that with myself now. I have craved attention to make me feel worthy and loved and safe. I know a few ways to do that, but it never actually makes me feel better. It’s like eating candy to feed a hungry belly. Short-lived fulfillment and sometimes made me sick. Sometimes I become aware when I am doing things for the wrong reasons, and I will recluse. Another shame cycle that leads to inconsistency and lack of forward movement.

If the cure for shame is not admiration, or compliments, what is it?

The Antidote To Shame Is Self-love

The first time a therapist told me I had to learn to love myself, I groaned. Why me?!? Why can’t everyone else love me— then I will be so filled up with love I will have no doubts that I am worthy?

Giving a compliment to someone with low self-esteem is like tossing your words into a black hole. It will never be enough. In the most trivial of examples, I can fix my hair and get compliments on it. Only to look at my hair in the mirror and think “I hate my hair”. Then to post a photo of my hair on social media, knowing I will get more compliments. To everyone else- it’s just hair. To me it is an example of my health, my taste, my life habits and how much respect I have for myself. The perception of it all is humiliating, and the retrospection on this cycle is hard for me to look at without internalizing.

I was given the advice by Joanna Wilder to name big feelings, by naming them as an opponent, it removes them from feeling like your inner self guiding you. I want to know myself enough to trust my intuition, but trauma responses can trick you. That is where Shame Monster comes from. I am not gross, but Shame Monster is, so I fight them. I fight them by sharing my secrets, by writing and clearing my brain, by spending time in solitude and retraining my self-talk.

“The less we talk about shame, the more control it has over our lives.” -Brene Brown

As always, thanks for reading.

Love, Britta

Ps- On May 16th, I am hosting space for us to plan our Ideal Week. This is a practice I come back to every so often, and I am so excited to host you and encourage you to build your business to support your dream life. Sign up for our first Infinity Session here.